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Nebraska corn official defends ethanol's water use

That University of Minnesota study on water used in ethanol production, released last week, shows Nebraska requires 501 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol. The studylooked at all water used in the production process, from the farm to the fuel pump.

By contrast, the report says it takes only six gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol in Iowa—the wide disparity being the amount of irrigation needed to grow the corn.

Randy Klein, director of market development for the Nebraska Corn Board, defends Nebraska’s corn-to-ethanol production process.

“The water is a resource for us here in Nebraska, and it’s just a matter of managing it,” Klein says. “It’s not amatter of saying, ‘No, we can’t use it’, because it’s there, it’s an important resource and it’s a great economic tool for the state of Nebraska. And this is a good way to make that into a renewable product—to replace our dependency on foreign oil with a Nebraska product.”

And, Klein says, Nebraska’s water use efficiency in growing corn continues to improve.

“Our corn farmers are producing more bushels on less water use, less pesticide, less fertilizer, etcetera,” says Klein. “So the evolution of the industry is coming,the efficiencies continue to always improve.”

The state with the highest rate of water use in ethanol production is California, at about 21-hundred gallons of water per gallon of ethanol. South Dakota uses about 96 gallons of water to produce one gallon ofethanol.